GCSE students to see marked exam papers online

A handful of lucky students will be able to see their marked exam papers on results day this year under a scheme being trialled by the exam board Edexcel.

The Results Plus scheme is being piloted with about 200 GCSE maths students at a small number of schools in the West Midlands and Wiltshire. It will include more subjects at both GCSE and A-level next year.

Students who have volunteered for the pilot will be able to log on to see their individual exam paper scores and overall grade. They will see their actual marked papers, showing scores for each question, as well as model answers to identify where they went wrong. Each candidate will also get a personalised "skills map" indicating their strengths and weaknesses in that subject.

Examiners will mark papers on screen. Three million of the 9.4m exam scripts handled by Edexcel last year were marked in this way.

The decision to mark 300 A-level, GCSE and other vocational exam papers on-screen resulted in the board being forced to use non-teaching staff to mark some scripts. Many examiners had refused to accept the new system, as well as lower pay, resulting in a shortage in some subjects.

Edexcel is now owned by the media group Pearson, which uses online technology to process millions of tests in the US. Jerry Jarvis, managing director of Edexcel, said electronic marking was having a profound effect on the management and speed of the examination-marking process.

Results Plus follows on from the board's results analysis service, which teachers have been using to determine how their school performed. The analysis service enables schools to compare their results against the national average, sort grades by teaching group or sex and make other detailed observations about students' performance.

According to a survey for Edexcel, 73% of parents said they wanted to know how well their child had performed in a subject compared not just to others in their class but nationally.